FLAME University maps India’s ever-changing state and district borders

A team from FLAME University is officially launching “The India State Stories” a project to uncover “the rich tapestry of Indian states and districts from 1941 to 2021

The birth of a nation or a state is a never quiet one. The public discourse is long and loud. But, many districts are formed with a simple executive order. In a stroke of the pen in 2016, Telangana tripled its number of districts. In 2022, Andhra Pradesh doubled the number of districts from 13 to 26. There was little debate or discussion among people.

Unfortunately, it was difficult to find a common data repository for all the information. The borders of many districts have changed. On the other hand, many cities were considered districts earlier. A person interested in exploring these chapters of Indian history over a long period would find it challenging to find data.

Now, a team from FLAME University is officially launching “The India State Stories” a project to uncover “the rich tapestry of Indian states and districts from 1941 to 2021”. The free platform has been unofficially open since last year. It allows historians, students, academicians from political science, demography, public health and education, policy makers and interested individuals to explore “the diverse historical and political narratives shaping the subcontinent.”

“There are untold stories and hidden facets of India’s regions. When you study a long period of time, you need to have a dictionary of how things have changed,” says Prof Shivakumar Jolad, the Founder-Director of the project. He is also an Associate Professor, Public Policy at FLAME University and Chair of the FLAME Center for Legislative Education and Research.

Though the platform appears to be of academic interest, it addresses the regular user by saying, “Administrative and political history isn’t just something happening far away— it shapes our daily lives. Maybe you remember a childhood story, an address mix-up after a district name change, or an unexpected impact of a policy shift”.

The interactive, user-friendly website stokes one’s curiosity. One of the first sections asks, “The foundational statement of India in the Constitution defines India as a union of states. Yet, none of the states that occupy India’s current geographical boundary existed in the same structure back in 1950. How did this come to be?”. Another chapter points out that “the political map of India in 1951 was unrecognisable from the map of 2021”. Another segment says, “Public policy and administration rarely address the evolution of the ‘district’ in India. Why are they split, who bears the costs and benefits? Does creating new districts lead to better administration?”

Apart from maps, tables and texts, there are podcasts on themes that take one on “a journey of India’s territorial evolution – from the colonial era to the Indian States and districts as we know them today”.

A chapter, titled “Why Indian Districts Are Not Equal” highlights how “India’s districts are widely unequal—in terms of population, area and population density, highlighting the arbitrary nature of district formation in the country”. The researchers show that Thane, Mumbai, Pune and Nagpur, among other districts, have very high population densities, while others are much less densely populated.

Another insightful chapter is “Political Motives Trump Administrative Reasons: Tracing the History of District Creation in India”. The District Dashboard section comprises six interactive dashboards to allow a user to visualise and track the evolution and changes in the Indian districts from 1872 till 2024.

A work in progress is the District Tracker, which uses tools, such as comparative bar charts and population-weighted bubble plots to help a user map and compare India’s administrative landscape as of 2025. “We take all the data from government sources, from the census and surveys to Open Government Data and Local Government Directory,” says Jolad.

This article has valuable insights of Prof. Shivakumar Jolad, Faculty of Public Policy, FLAME University.